{"id":30,"date":"2018-02-05T00:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-04T15:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/?p=30"},"modified":"2018-06-08T16:35:19","modified_gmt":"2018-06-08T07:35:19","slug":"art-director-kazuki-higashiji-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"Art director Kazuki Higashiji, Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2015\u2015Tell us your first impression of <em>Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms<\/em>.<br \/>\nHIGASHIJI: To be honest, my first thought was \u201cWhat, really?!\u201d (laughs) Before I even knew about the project, I got an offer directly from director Okada, and I thought, if she\u2019s in charge, I\u2019d love to join. I was under the impression it would be a modern drama, and I didn\u2019t learn the truth until later. When I heard it was a straight-up fantasy story, that\u2019s what I thought, \u201cwhat, really?!\u201d (laughs).<br \/>\n\u2015\u2015Why did you think that?<br \/>\nHIGASHIJI: I remember director Okada telling me that people of our generation got into fantasy through games like Dragon Quest. But I thought, yes, it\u2019s true and I played those games, but it\u2019s different from drawing fantasy for practical purposes. Also, the way I saw it was, it\u2019s a lot easier for people to relate to things set in modern times. A school classroom, a vending machine on the way home\u2026 viewers can remember these things from their own lives. But not with fantasy. I thought, wow, I\u2019ve really taken on something huge. And for a while, I couldn\u2019t get a grasp on Maquia as a character. I even sat down with director Okada and complained about all the things I didn\u2019t understand about the character. So, for some time, I had a hard time drawing.<br \/>\n\u2015\u2015What changed?<br \/>\nHIGASHIJI: There were a few things that sparked the change, and one of them was sitting in on a table read. In a table read, the main cast comes together and take 2 hours to read through the script from the beginning. Director Okada asked me to sit in, so I did, and the first thing that struck me was the high energy from the cast. And then when they were done, everyone was crying. Then for about an hour everyone talked about the script. Seeing that, I thought, this is probably a really great piece of work. Then I remember apologizing to Okada for complaining. Another thing was a bit later, when I was telling Okada about all the doubts I had about Maquia as a character. She said to me, \u201cIt\u2019s hard for her too!\u201d and I noticed that I saw this story from Ariel\u2019s perspective, which changed my approach a lot.<br \/>\n\u2015\u2015\u2015\u2015How did you feel about being a part of the project?<br \/>\nHIGASHIJI: Regarding the art direction\u2026 if I was a piano, and I was only making music with half the keys, Okada wanted me to use all 88. Being so close to the heat source that is director Okada, I felt like I was able to do good work using that heat.<\/p>\n<p>Kazuki Higashiji, art director on works like <em>AngelBeats!, Hanasaku Iroha, TARI TARI, <\/em>and <em>Nagi no Asukara<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2015\u2015Tell us your first impression of Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms. HIGASHIJI: To be honest, my first  [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.eigafan.com\/sayoasaen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}